Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Many in the West would like to see Iran punished for its nuclear ambitions. Tehran's residents would like those people to take a glimpse into their lives.

The European Union announced Monday it is banning the import of Iranian crude oil and blocking trade in gold, diamonds, and precious metals, among other steps, adding to sanctions already imposed by the United States and the United Nations. The measures take a big toll on Iran's lifeblood oil revenues.

The lives of ordinary Iranians have been deeply touched in recent weeks by the Western sanctions. Several spoke to CNN about how they are coping with staggering inflation and a plunging national currency, although none felt comfortable being fully identified, fearful of the Islamic Republic's long reach into private lives.

Farhad, 47, was once comfortable, but things began sliding downhill when sanctions came and the foreign oil firm that employed him packed up and left.

As a taxi driver, he works hard but saves little money. With the latest round of U.S. sanctions imposed on Iran's Central Bank last month, he has seen staggering inflation; the price of meat and milk have skyrocketed by as much as 50 percent.LINK FOR REST

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL), one of Washington's most reliably hawkish politicos on Iran, made clear yesterday that he wants to go over the heads of the Iranian regime and appeal to the Iranian people's hearts and minds — and he's willing to forsake their stomachs to do it.

Appearing on a local Chicago radio show, Kirk said the allegedly Iranian-backed assassination plot exposed by the Obama administration yesterday was the perfect excuse to impose broad-based economic sanctions. So broad-based are Kirk's sanctions that they're specifically designed to collapse Iran's currency, the Rial, by targeting the Islamic Republic's central bank. Kirk was one of a few Republicans to say in the past two days that the allegedly Iranian-backed assassination plot constituted an act of war.

One of the show's hosts, Ron Majors, asked Kirk whether, as is often the case with sanctions, going after the Iranian economy with such a broad brush stands to hurt ordinary Iranians. Kirk, who acknowledges later in the interview that the current government was "only able to hold onto power by stealing [the] last election," then made the stunning admission that he didn't see anything wrong with literally denying food to ordinary Iranians.LINK FOR REST

Article 54 of the Geneva Protocol prohibits starvation as a method of war. This is precisely what the United States, Europe and the United Nations did in Iraq. They imposed a medieval embargo and tried to starve the nation into submission. The result was over 500,000 dead children, which Clinton's Secretary of State, Madeline Albright said was a price worth paying. Over the span of ten years, child mortality in Iraq went from one of the lowest in the world, to the highest.

George Bush Senior's sanctions, carried over by his son and Clinton, resulted in starvation, malnutrition, and disease epidemics not only of children, but the the entire population of Iraq with the exception of Saddam Hussein and his coterie.

"We are now... responsible for killing people, destroying their families, their children, allowing their older parents to die for lack of basic medicines," said Denis Halliday, a former UN official, in 2000, three years before Bush Junior finished off the country and paved the path to the slaughter of an additional 1.5 million Iraqis. Halliday said the sanctions amounted to genocide.LINK FOR REST

Ynet reports that an advisor of Bibi Netanyahu has suggested that the world starve Iran into submission: Iran's citizens should be starved in order to curb Tehran's nuclear program, officials in Jerusalem said Wednesday ahead of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming trip to Washington. "North Korea is halting its nuclear program in order to receive aid in food, and this is what should be done with Iran as well," one unnamed official said.LINK FOR REST